This week's opinion: 24 October 2024

I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the Treasury during the final discussions before the Budget is finally signed off. These will be going on until the last possible minute and no doubt there will be arguments – civilised I hope – over where some proposals will finally land.

What will be going on behind closed doors will be the working out of the tension between the pragmatists and the purists. Take non-dom reform. It is a perfectly respectable position to say that those who live in the UK should be subject to full taxation on their worldwide income and (on their death) assets. But how do you define that? Clearly somebody who has lived in the UK all their life is at one end of the spectrum; but what of the unfortunate visitor who is killed in a car crash on day one of their...